BY MYLA IGLESIAS

NO leak was found in the Malampaya natural gas production platform and pipeline during weekend tests, easing fears of rotating brownouts in Luzon, a Shell spokesman said yesterday.

Roberto Kanapi, external affairs manager of Filipinas Shell Petroleum Corp., said had the Malampaya facility been damaged, repairs could have taken as long as six months.

Filipinas Shell is a sister company of Shell Exploration Corp., operator of Malampaya which supplies fuel to the country’s three gas-fired generating plants with a combined capacity of 2,700 megawatts.

The 1,200 MW output of the Ilijan and the 1,500 MW combined output of the Santa Rita and San Lorenzo plants represent half of the electricity requirement of Luzon, up from 30 percent, because of a shortage of fuel for coal plants.

Shell Exploration shut down Malampaya on Friday, three years before its next five-year maintenance cycle in 2011, to check for leaks and to repair control valves.

Delivery of gas via an undersea pipeline to a receiving terminal in Batangas, however, was not halted.

Fears of a leak prompted the National Power Corp. to call on the Department of Energy to activate a government-private sector task force to come up with emergency measures to ensure adequate power supply.

NPC also stepped up procurement of coal for its idled plants and placed oil-fired plants, which are expensive to run, on standby.